E2 Crossovers

This was inspired by an few ideas being kicked around on #E. It is a few short snippets of what E2 would be like if it were merged with an RPG or two. It is humour. It is noding about noding. It is not serious.

The ultra-Halogen lights of the club reflected off the Plasti-Wood dancefloor, splintering into millions of little slices of violet and green luminescence. A tall Shaaman, Hermetic, moved through the tight crowd, the dancers parting like water as he passed through them and made his way to on of the small tables in the dark corner of the club. Mr. Johnson was there waiting for him as arranged, leaning back on his chair, framed by two Orks who had their hands suspiciously in their pockets.

Hermetic sat his drink down on the stained cork tabletop, turned the remaining chair around and sat himself down on it, resting his forarms on the ladderback. He never broke his gaze on Johnson.

They sat like that in a sullen silence, except for the droning 'thud' of Devious Dee's "Chrome Continuum" flowing off the dancefloor. Seconds passed, though they seemed like minutes.

"Aren't you going to ask me why I wanted to see you?" inquired the Johnson. "Or should we go dance?" he quipped.

Hermetic took a long sip of his drink, "Well, since YOU asked ME here, it seems fair I should be told why," he said, still not breaking his gaze.

"I already know what you want, I just wanted to make certain you knew it." Hermetic said, as he thoughtfuly considered on of the more colourful stains on the table.

He Continued, "Nate has been trying to establish Everything3 as the Matrix's primary data repository for some time, but he can't do it until EveryDevel figures out how to overcome the 300 query/second barrier that MySQL has."

"Go on," prodded Johnson.

"However, it seems NovaTech *has* figured it out. But since NovaTech is well known for how well it keeps it's secrets, EveryDevel hasn't been able to Buy, License or Steal the technology from them, especially since it's Not GPL'ed. In order for Everything3 to become the dominant force in the information world, Nate needs this technology."

He took another sip of his drink, "Did I leave anything out?"

"One thing." Johnson Smiled, "EveryDevel hasn't gained extraterritorial status as a 5-A Megacorp Yet, and so they can't wage a public offensive in order to get this technology -- Zurich-Orbital would never permit it. So we need discretion and... subtlety."

"And in return, you pay me the price I quoted?"

"Mr. Hermetic, if you can pull this off, I'll triple it," Johnson replied with glee.

"Acceptable," said Hermetic, rising from his chair.

"Oh, and one more thing." Hermetic added, as he raised to his full height and drained the last of his drink. He thoughtfully examined the empty glass and suddenly, but in a smooth motion, threw it against the club wall. Shards of crystal caught the lights and cast an eerie starfield over his face.

"I don't like this," quivered Xunke, "I don't like any of this at all. Too dark, too dark."

AlexZander quickly whipped around and glared at the little man with a flame of contempt, "Look, you're a Dwarf, and Dwarfs like dungeons. Right. For the love of Pete, your people build this place!"

"HEY!" the little man shouted back, "for the last time, I'm not a DWARF, I'm a Halfling! No beard, see? No beard! There IS a difference you... you... you great tall oak tree!"

"Ooooh", AlexZander chided in mock fear, "The DWARF insulted me. I think I may just die of mortification right here and now!" He placed his palm on Xunke's hatted head and pushed him over onto the dusty ground.

"Shorty."

At this, the Halfling pulled himself up and kicked the Human in the shins as hard as he could, which was pretty hard considering his height.

"You little rat!" screamed AlexZander. "Now Listen, I don't like you, and you don't like me. But you're the only one who knows how to read these nodes, and so I need your help, okay?"

"Fine," Xunke shot back, "delighted to hear you have so much love for me."

AlexZander pointed his finger at the short man like a sword "Listen, you..." and was about to give him what-for, but relented. "Where in the name of Naria are we?"

"This", whispered the Halfling, "Is the Under-Gel. These nodes are the ancient ones written before the Epoch. Written by the Old Ones."

At this word, the Halflings' torch suddenly flickered as a low, menacing growl flowed up from beyond the mist of the tunnel ahead of them. Xunke Swallowed hard. AlexZander readied his claymore, "so then that must be the EDB, am I right?"

"I'm afraid that you are," Xunke replied, retrieving his Warhammer from his napsack, "and that means.. we're lunch."

Page category:

My first conscious thought is: smells like nodegel. My next few thoughts go something like this: Where am I? What's up with my body? Is this the resleeving center? Oh God, it is! I died!

With a significant effort I get my new eyes open. A Cybonobouplift stares back at me from the ceiling. It takes it blinking a few times before I realize I'm looking at my own reflection in a full length mirror. Why the hell am I a monkey!?

I try with some difficulty to sit up and manage it on the third attempt. I'm in a generic looking resleeving clinic with a standard E2D2 courtesy bot next to my bed, padded table, whatever.

"Welcome back Dustyblue," it says in its comforting, androgynous voice.

"Thanks. When is it?" I asks in a hollow attempt to distract myself from the body dysphoria that is threatening to turn into a panic attack.

"1:49 PM, Saturday ,June twenty-third."

"What year is it?" I ask. My simian stomach feels like it's full of ice water.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I've only been dead a month. I haven't lost another decade as a soul in storage only to wake up in a world that left me behind.

"Good. Now, why am I a monkey?"

"You are sleeved into a six year old female cyber bonobo form previously owned by the ██████ corporation."

It's never a good sign when the previous owners want to remain anonymous. Also did it just say female. I check. Yep. It's not the first time I've been in a female body but it's definitely the most uncomfortable.

E2D2 seems to miss the sarcasm in those statements because it immediately starts instructing me on and running me through exercise meant to help me adapt to my new body. I decide to abuse the bot's infinite patience and split my attention between the instructions and texting my superiors. I let my eyes glaze over and try to access my implants. After an intolerably long time my entopic displays come up. Several pieces of software that I never installed offer me free trial versions of apps that I already have the freeware clones of. Away foul adware. After many mutter curses I get to my IM app running.

Dustyblue calling godsgroup.
...
...
...
Tem42 is responding. Open channel? [Y or N?]
Yes...
...
...
<Tem42> Hi dusty. I hear you're a monkey.<Dustyblue> Yes, why am I in a CYBONOBO! If this is somebody's idea of a joke I will hunt them down.<Tem42> No joke. Three weeks ago the five biggest body bank's discovered that nearly their entire stock had a some sort of retrovirus that caused them to lose brain function. Supposed to resemble Alzheimer's but really fast and sudden. Most people affected were fine but some suffered permanent brain damage. A few are going to need extensive therapy. Obviously your clones were part of the infected batch. <Dustyblue> Has anyone claimed responsibility? <Tem42>As if we could ever be that lucky.

I thought about it. Who could stand to gain from ruining half of the back-up bodies on the moon? Wrong question. Lots of people were probably making a killing off this, including whoever put my current body up for sale. No the real question is who would be crazy enough to concoct and execute a plan this insane. Surely they know that every person who has ever worked in any of the facilities is going to have their entire digital history examined, spend hours answering questions while their brain activity is examined, and spend the rest of their lives on all kinds of watch lists. In short, who ever did this is either crazy, doesn't care if they get caught, or they actually expect to get away with it because they're clever to a degree that I can't even begin to imagine. I can't imagine any of the hyper-corps taking that kind of risk. No special interest groups have the resources and the motivation. Losing that many back-ups is bad for just about everyone. The ones who lost theirs will be suspicious of those who didn't. Could it have been orchestrated translunar? It just doesn't make sense.

<Dustyblue> How many people do we have working on this? <Tem42> I can't give you an exact number. I can tell you that Team Jet-Poop left its base. <Dustyblue> But they only mobilize when something is deemed an immediate threat to humanity-plus. <Dustyblue> This isn't an E3/EDB thing? The Death Borg is still on Earth, right? <Tem42> We have no plausible suspects at this time. If you want to know more I would suggest reading the thirty thousand news articles about it.<Dustyblue> Right, sorry.Tem42 has closed the line.

With nothing better to do I begin the body integration exercises. I'm going to have to do these same exercises again when I get a human body but no point in putting my life on hold until then.

This story was inspired by the short story Lack which can be found in the front of the Eclipse Phase core rule book and all the write ups from the early 2000s that treated E2 as though it was it's own self contained world.